


Open Smother

by ionlyloveyouironically



Category: All For The Game - Nora Sakavic
Genre: Angst, Closure, Gen, Self-Harm
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-09
Updated: 2017-02-12
Packaged: 2018-09-23 02:34:49
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,757
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9637139
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ionlyloveyouironically/pseuds/ionlyloveyouironically
Summary: Before he was Andrew Minyard, he was Andrew Doe, and he exiled himself to juvie all for a brother he didn't know.





	1. I Know I Can't Be Free

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TRIGGERS: self-harm, struggles with sexuality, references to prior instances of sexual abuse, and off-screen sexual abuse that takes place within the story

Andrew is terrified. And angry (enraged) that he’s terrified, because fear is what happens when you don’t know what’s coming, and he’s known what’s coming for most of his life, but he didn’t see this somehow. He’s angry because if he’s terrified it means he cares, and he swore he wouldn’t anymore, because he couldn’t. It _hurts_ too much.

But he does, because he’s in the bathroom gulping down shaking breaths and there’s blood dripping down his arm, and he _cares_.

Just this one thing. He just wants this one thing.

///

Andrew laid there for a moment, righting his breathing, before he moved. He unclenched his hands from their grip around the metal bars of the headboard and scrubbed at his face. He didn’t cry anymore when this happened, but his eyes naturally watered and ran from the pain. He hated it.

He kept a stained towel hidden between his mattress and the box spring where Cass wouldn’t search. ( _Because she’d never invade Andrew’s privacy. Ironic, when her son-_ ) He reached for it, held it over his rear, and started the slow process of sitting up.

He couldn’t get blood on the sheets again. After his second “nosebleed” she’d gotten worried and started saying things about a doctor’s appointment. He’d fended her off, and hadn’t gotten a nosebleed since.

He couldn’t shower this late at night. Cass would know, and think something was wrong. Andrew’s life was spent making sure she never thought anything was wrong. That was how he’d get to keep her.

Anything was worth keeping Cass.

///

Cass was frazzled. She darted around the kitchen checking various pots and looking into the oven every now and then. Andrew sat on the counter out of the way of her cooking mayhem and swung his socked feet lightly, pulling them in whenever she passed, and watched her in quiet amusement.

All this food wasn’t even for them; the church was hosting a pre-Thanksgiving event and one of the families who’d promised to bring food had dropped out. The Spears weren’t even really dedicated members, they didn’t attend every Sunday, but the pastor called them and Cass rose to the challenge.

She stopped by Andrew and slumped against the counter, smoothing a few stray hairs back into her bun. “I can’t believe Richard turned tail and made me do all this myself.”

“I can.” Andrew had taken one moment to analyze Richard Spear and deem him useless but amiable.

Cass clicked her tongue at him and tapped him on the shoulder gently, hiding a smile. He sat slumped over and relaxed, but even if he didn’t Cass would still be taller than him. His height didn’t really bother him like most people assumed it did; for all he was small, he was scrappy, and any antagonists soon learned to keep their mouths shut.

Cass was absently talking through all the things she still needed to do and make. “I can help,” Andrew offered, deadpan.

She choked on a laugh and sputtered out, “ _No_.” The Spears had once left Andrew home alone without money for takeout and returned later to find a blackened pan in the sink, Andrew nursing a burned hand, and a smoke stain on the ceiling above the stove that would persist through the years.

 _What was in the pan?_ she’d asked, incredulous.

 _Easy Mac_ , he’d answered, eyes a fraction wider than normal with panic before she’d laughed herself silly.

“We’re trying to feed people, hon, not poison them.” She smiled at him.

Andrew lived for these smiles. It sounded pathetic, even when he caught himself thinking it, but _god_ it was the truth. The pain of being torn in half and the pulsating throb of his arms under their sleeves were worth it sevenfold when she looked at him like that. Like he was good. Like he was loved.

She ran her fingers lightly through the hair hanging over his forehead, brushing it away, and Andrew almost froze before he forced himself not to because it was such a _motherly_ thing. “How long has it been since we cut your hair?”

He knew the exact date and what she had been wearing the last time she’d cut his hair, but settled with, “A couple months.”

“It’s getting long. Did you want to grow it out?”

He shrugged.

She made a low _hmm_ noise and kept brushing his hair off his face. He wanted to relax into it. “Is that pot supposed to be bubbling over like that?”

Cass gasped and spun towards the stove, taking a step before realizing he was messing with her. “Andrew _Joseph_ , you _stinker_!”

Andrew felt himself smile at her.

///

The thing is, he’s only been with them for seven months. That’s not a very long time, he’d stayed in other homes for longer periods of time before. But to him, it’s a lifetime.

Look, it’s. Andrew’s not bitter, he’s _not_. He doesn’t waste time thinking what _could’ve been_ , and he’s under no delusion that he had a perfectly healthy happy family before he was ripped away and thrown into the system. He’s not owed anything.

He _knows_ that. It’s just…

God, he wants.

He wants so bad. To have someone to be there when he gets home, someone who cares if he comes back at all. To have someone who not only puts up with all his shit and his attitude and his bad days but who actually tries to help him through it.

Cass never complains. When he comes home in the back of a cop car, when she gets called to pick him up at the station at eleven at night, she’s never mad. She only lectures him about his choices affect his own life.

And, for once, this is something in his grasp. He can keep this, can hold onto it by his fingernails and teeth, can claw it into existence. _He_ ’ll be off to boot camp in a few short months. It’s attainable.

Except that the letter changes everything.

///

Andrew knew he had a reason to hate Higgins. He was a do-gooder, which made him untrustworthy, but this? Andrew didn’t like this one bit.

 _We write our n’s the same way._ For some reason, that was the fact that stuck out to him more than what the letter contained.

A twin. Another person with his exact DNA. How touching. How _fucking_ touching.

He threw the letter in the trash.

///

Andrew was in the shower. He’d already been there for an hour but Cass was supposed to be home at 4:30 so really he could stay in for another two.

He had gone to school that day, and had planned on staying all day, he really had, but he’d caught himself staring. In a not-entirely threatening kind of way.

At a boy.

He hadn’t even realized he was checking him out until another student had accidentally knocked against his desk and he’d started, and blushed. He hadn’t even known why he was blushing until he realized he was still thinking about the boy’s lips and what they might feel like-

He had to leave. So he’d ditched and walked home and tried not to think about it, but he kept seeing his _lips_ and _jaw_ and the line of his _neck_ leading down to the collar of his tee-

And he was aroused.

So now he was in the shower with the water as cold as he could stand it, shivering and gasping in breaths and trying not to cry.

He couldn’t- not a _boy_. He didn’t like _boys_. This wasn’t-

He could handle everything else. He could handle all the men that had crept into his bed, he could handle Drake trying to make him think he liked it every night, he could handle carrying around the scars on his arms for the rest of his life.

But this… He didn’t even know that boy. And the way he’d been thinking about him ( _soft, pretty_ ) sounded like everything everyone had always whispered in his ear while they ripped him to shreds. He didn’t want to be like them.

He would never be like them.

He put a hand over his mouth to make himself breathe through his nose. His face felt hot despite the cold water, and his heart was fluttering in his chest like the beat of butterfly wings. _Panic. You’re panicking. Stop it._

He kept a hand at his mouth and one at his throat and tapped in time with his pulse point there, counting heartbeats and breaths until he calmed down enough to turn the water to lukewarm and quell his shaking.

He didn’t like boys, he just _thought_ he did. He didn’t think he was attracted to anyone; when he thought of anyone else’s hands on him, even with his knowing consent, there was only a tsunami wave of nausea where he thought arousal should probably be. So it was just a mistake.

He turned the water off, and took one last shuddering breath through his mouth before stepping out of the tub and drying off. And he didn’t think about it again.

///

Drake found out. Because Cass had found out. Because apparently not replying to a letter was too subtle of a message for his twin brother, so his twin had written another one, and asked Higgins to deliver it. And Higgins had, straight into Cass’s hands with the whole goddamn story.

(“Twins?” Drake had asked. He was around that afternoon.

“Perfectly identical,” Higgins answered. _Fucking fool._ “I was calling him Andrew until he corrected me.”

Drake slid his eyes over to Andrew. “It’s like there’s two AJ’s.”

Andrew felt sick.)

Cass had talked to him about it. That was the only reason he’d written a reply. _Honey, it doesn’t matter to me whether you’d like to see him or not, but at least reply so he doesn’t have to wonder._

So Andrew had informed her that he would _not_ like to see him and wrote a simple _fuck off_  that he only half meant to the brother he’d never met, sealed the envelope, and walked to the post office.

It didn’t stop Drake from coming to his room that night and leaning over him, saying, “I’m telling my mom you want to see him. Think of all the fun we could have, me and my matched set.”

He made Andrew hurt for keeping the secret, and it was the first time in a long time he cried.

///

And now he’s in the bathroom at home in the middle of the day when he should be at school. His arm is dripping and he’s shaking, and even though there’s no one else in the house at this time of day, the door is locked.

_You’re panicking again. Stop it._

He is panicking, but the cuts help focus him, help make things more real.

This is what’s real:

The cold tile of the floor. The stinging heat on is arm where he just added four new scars. The ache in his back. The enlarged feeling of his eyeballs from so little sleep last night.

Cass. Drake. Aaron.

The fact is, he knows he can’t stay. If he stays, Aaron will come here, and Andrew can’t do that to him. He was willing to bear this because it meant he could keep Cass, but that’s his choice, not something he can shove onto the poor sap who just wanted to meet the person he’d shared a womb with for ten months.

He has to go, so Aaron will never contact this house again.

He can’t keep Cass.

And it’s almost funny. After everything he’d gone through for her, he still isn’t allowed to keep this one, this _one thing_ that he wants.

Maybe he doesn’t deserve this. There’s a reason he’s never been able to hold onto anything good, and his mind flashes to the shower and directly before it, and he remembers how Samuel used to tell him _I know you like this_ , and he thinks about Drake tickling him until he’s forced to laugh, and-

He cuts himself again without realizing, deeper than usual, so he immediately gets up and starts to clean and bandage it.

It’s no use wallowing. He knows what has to happen, and he shouldn’t have even thought it would turn out any other way. He let himself sit and wish for a future that was never meant to be his in the first place. He’d feel stupid if he could feel anything at all.

///

Breaking and entering seems like a safe enough bet, so that’s what he does, and when the pigs get there and yell at him to _freeze!_ he takes off. He knows it looks worse for him if he runs, which is the idea, but he also wonders if they’d be able to catch him, which is why he goes at full speed.

But one of them tackles him, and his body reacts in blind panic at the heavy weight on top of him, so he fights, which wasn’t originally part of the script.

That’s how Andrew Joseph Doe punches a cop in the face.

When they slam him up against the hood of the cruiser and cuff him, he fights down the laugh clawing up his throat.

///

Cass isn’t pleased, to say the least. Nor can she pay his bail, exorbitant after his run in with the officer’s nose.

She gets him a lawyer, though, and Andrew almost feels a pang of guilt at the wasted money. Almost. He hasn’t really felt anything since the abruptly-stifled panic the last time he took a razor to his skin, and he keeps squeezing his arm to make sure his physical nerves aren’t dead as well.

He’s as disrespectful as he wants to be in court, and in the end the judge sentences him to a year in juvenile. Cass is crying, he can hear, but he’s done what he meant to do. When they put the cuffs on him, he breathes out a long exhale and for the first time in months his shoulders relax.

///

He couldn’t have kept Cass anyway. But he’s safe behind bars, and the brother he’ll never know is free.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter title from Folsom Prison Blues (sorry), work title from Bloodflood pt. II by alt-J.
> 
> Thank you for reading! Next chapter will be up soon.


	2. 16 Years Later

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Andrew grows up.

He dreams in memory.

_-notebook paper, carefully written on, folded and unfolded many times by someone else, the edges soft and trembling and held by a shaky hand-_

It’s less usual now than when he was in college, when it happened every night.

_-clouds parting on an overcast day, a single beam illuminating a single bright, blue eye studying him-_

Sometimes it’s something he needs to work through

_-hands hands mouth teeth pain pain pain pain pain too close too close-_

and other times he ignores it because it’s not a problem.

_-the bounce of curls as the head they belong to walks away into the airport, two hands entwined raising to block out a bright sun, the jinglepatter of a small animal jumping down to greet the door, a tinny laugh in his ear-_

///

Neil came in after his run and, on seeing Andrew was on the phone, made a questioning face at him. Andrew, on the ground in front of the fridge, pointed at one of the alphabet fridge magnets in reply. ‘B’. Neil nodded and went off, hopefully to go take a shower.

Andrew was off the phone when he came back, and he leaned against the doorway and asked, “How’s Betsy?” He smelled strongly of strawberries and sugar, even from the distance Andrew sat.

“She wants to know if I will do another 5K with her.”

“Are you?”

“I would have to get the game schedule and see if I can.”

Neil smiled a little, because he knew to take that as an affirmative. “Are you hungry?” Then, at Andrew’s dark look, “What?”

“You ask if I’m hungry in that tone as if you’re offering to cook. We both know if we want anything edible I have to make it.”

“We both actually know that you’re just better than me at cooking,” Neil said innocently.

Andrew got up and began pulling things out, but paused to curl his lip at Neil. “Flattery is still lying, Josten.” Neil laughed as Andrew flipped one of the burners on to medium. “Now sit there and shut up. If you pay attention you’ll realize that not even you can fuck up French toast.”

Neil sat there and shut up.

///

The thing is, Andrew almost never thinks of Cass anymore. He used to, though, every now and then. When he lived with Nicky and Aaron, when he had the assault trial, the first year and a half of college.

She was turned into an unattainable ideal, in his head, and he’d use her as a reminder to himself if he ever thought he was starting to want something. _This is what happened last time, you can’t want things, no matter what you won’t get them anyway._

He doesn’t know why. Probably as some form of coping mechanism, if Bee was to be trusted ( _she is_ ).

He remembers her, and he remembers wanting her, but mostly he remembers the head-on collision with reality and how long it took to scrape his broken remains from the ground.

///

“This is stupid.”

“You say that every year.”

“I don’t.”

He paused.

“Halloween is-”

“Stupid, for kids, immature, pointless, a waste of time,” Andrew listed off. He raised an eyebrow at Neil.

Neil sulked for fifteen minutes, and Andrew wondered if all Exy stars were this dramatic.

///

Andrew’s belief in the mental health profession began and ended with Betsy Dobson. Everyone else he had ever seen had only wanted to treat him to make themselves into a self-professed savant. They were so caught up in quantifying and labelling things that were different in every human being that they ended up helping no one. Andrew himself did not need anything about him labelled, but he also couldn’t deny that he was in the middle of what Betsy called ‘a severe depressive episode.’

It had happened before, and it would happen again, but none of that mattered. Nothing much really mattered right now, and he was losing chunks of time to staring into space.

Neil had gently bullied him into sitting on the couch before leaving for practice, though he must have opened the blinds and wrapped a blanket around Andrew’s shoulders before he left, though Andrew didn’t recall seeing him do it.

Neil came back early in the afternoon, and Andrew was still on the couch, blank.

“Andrew.” He waited until Andrew looked at him. “I’m about to take a shower, so go to the bathroom.” Andrew stared at him for another moment before the words sunk in, and then he got up and relieved himself, only noticing the pain in his bladder when it was gone.

Other than that, Neil left him alone for the night, except to force some food and water on him. He never went near Andrew when he was like this, never tried to talk to or comfort him. He sat in the armchair farthest from Andrew’s side of the couch and read, while Sir took up the whole cushion next to Andrew and King nestled up against Andrew’s thigh and purred.

Neil made Andrew go to bed and Neil gave him a wide berth all night. When Neil opened his eyes in the morning, Andrew was looking at him. “Morning.”

“…Morning.”

Neil smiled.

///

Here’s the truth: when he does think about Cass, he thinks about how he nearly destroyed himself just to keep her. He remembers being constantly tired, and aching in more ways than just physically. He’d almost killed himself trying to hold on to something that could never have been in his reach. And he remembers how she hadn't seemed to notice a single thing.

///

“And what do you think, now that you’re older?”

He gathered his words, and she waited patiently. Routine. “I think she was what I thought I wanted, but not what I really needed.”

He could almost feel her calm smile through the phone.

///

The trial itself was something Andrew could recognize he Did Not Want to do. (It’s hard, still, knowing whether he wants something or not. Other than physical boundaries and basic creature comforts, he has to stop and consider whether he actively Does Not Want something or whether he’s ambivalent towards it.) It’s like his scars: he’s not ashamed, but it’s also _nobody’s business but his_ , and he recognizes that it’s information that will paint him in a different light than most people see him in.

The victim. The prey.

He’d rather people think he’s the wolf than the sheep. He’d rather look like the dingo than the baby.

He Did Not Want to see his brother put on the stand for this, he Did Not Want to go up there and lay the chalk outline of his own abuse for everyone to gasp and gawk at, and he Did Not Want to see the grieving Spears avoid looking anywhere near him or Aaron. He Did Not Want anything to do with the whole affair, but he had to do it anyway, so it was useless to focus on what he didn’t want.

Betsy took him out for a milkshake after his testimony was over, and they sat for a while in the diner even after their drinks were finished. They sat in silence while Andrew slowly drained the venom from his bloodstream and put his mind back in order.

///

His life is his life, and it can’t be changed. Andrew knows this, and isn’t bothered by it. His time is better spent with other pursuits, the life he builds every day, every step forward he takes. (That’s how Neil says it one day. Andrew scoffs, but he thinks later that, again, he may not be as smart as he thought.) He has other things to focus on, like-

-the tip of Neil’s tongue and the way it sticks out from between his lips while he does the taxes with glee.

-reading the books Renee suggests when she has time to call him, and finding everything wrong with them.

-listening in on every skype call Neil has with Nicky.

-making sure Bee only has one cheat day a week instead of however many she tries to get away with.

///

Andrew skims through the letter in his hands, and doesn’t feel anything for it when he opens up the trash bin and throws it away. He has better things to do.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (The curly hair walking into the airport is Nicky btw.)
> 
> Thank you for reading! Comments/kudos are appreciated.
> 
> Follow me on [twitter](http://www.twitter.com/1980salienboi) and [tumblr](http://1980salienboi.tumblr.com/)


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